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You've illustrated why I'm against the kind of simplistic programming maxims you'll find in "Effective X" books. It's easy to brand certain syntactic constructs

You've illustrated why I'm against the kind of simplistic programming maxims you'll find in "Effective X" books. It's easy to brand certain syntactic constructs as "bad", but unless you teach people good taste (which is fiendishly difficult to learn), all you do by telling people to avoid certain easily-recognizable syntactic patterns is to get them to come up with new horrors.

notduncansmith 9y ago
As GP said, rethink the code, from as far out as you need to. Granted, much code has been written under the explicit constraint of not doing this. In that case, do the nasty thing and then if it matters that much to you, find somewhere else to work that cares a similar amount about producing maintainable software.
leni536 9y ago
> You've illustrated why I'm against the kind of simplistic programming maxims you'll find in "Effective X" books. Another thing you won't find in this book is the C++ Gospel, the One True Path to perfect C++ software. Each of the Items in this book provides guidance on how to develop better designs, how to avoid common problems, or how to achieve greater efficiency, but none of the Items is universally applicable. ... If you follow all the guidelines all the time, you are unlikely to fall into the most common traps surrounding C++, but guidelines, by their nature, have exceptions. That's why each Item has an explanation. The explanations are the most important part of the book. Scott Meyers - Effective C++ The problem is not "Effective X" books. The problems is people treating these rules in these books as dogma.
- jstimpfle 9y ago
  Not following a dogma pretty consistently in a single code base (or part of a very large codebase) very quickly leads to inconsistent code and bikeshed style of decision making.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    That, or it could lead to well architected code that changes according to its requirements. YMMV. The one thing that does never work is blindly following dogma.
- quotemstr 9y ago
  > The problem is not "Effective X" books. The problems is people treating these rules in these books as dogma. You put a bunch of stuff in a book and people are going to copy the stuff from the book into their programs. Bits of front-matter don't matter. Consider the GoF book and the havoc that mindless repetition of design patterns creates.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    Still the problem is the people working mindlessly, not the books. The alternative would be to not ever improve our knowledge.

notduncansmith 9y ago

As GP said, rethink the code, from as far out as you need to. Granted, much code has been written under the explicit constraint of not doing this. In that case, do the nasty thing and then if it matters that much to you, find somewhere else to work that cares a similar amount about producing maintainable software.

leni536 9y ago

> You've illustrated why I'm against the kind of simplistic programming maxims you'll find in "Effective X" books. Another thing you won't find in this book is the C++ Gospel, the One True Path to perfect C++ software. Each of the Items in this book provides guidance on how to develop better designs, how to avoid common problems, or how to achieve greater efficiency, but none of the Items is universally applicable. ... If you follow all the guidelines all the time, you are unlikely to fall into the most common traps surrounding C++, but guidelines, by their nature, have exceptions. That's why each Item has an explanation. The explanations are the most important part of the book. Scott Meyers - Effective C++ The problem is not "Effective X" books. The problems is people treating these rules in these books as dogma.

jstimpfle 9y ago
Not following a dogma pretty consistently in a single code base (or part of a very large codebase) very quickly leads to inconsistent code and bikeshed style of decision making.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  That, or it could lead to well architected code that changes according to its requirements. YMMV. The one thing that does never work is blindly following dogma.
quotemstr 9y ago
> The problem is not "Effective X" books. The problems is people treating these rules in these books as dogma. You put a bunch of stuff in a book and people are going to copy the stuff from the book into their programs. Bits of front-matter don't matter. Consider the GoF book and the havoc that mindless repetition of design patterns creates.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  Still the problem is the people working mindlessly, not the books. The alternative would be to not ever improve our knowledge.